{"product_id":"9781603580649","title":"Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service","description":"\u003cp\u003eDuring the tumultuous year of 2008—when gas prices reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership records, and a commuter train collided with a freight train in California—journalist James McCommons spent a year on America's trains, talking to the people who ride and work the rails throughout much of the Amtrak system. Organized around these rail journeys, \u003ci\u003eWaiting on a Train\u003c\/i\u003e is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eReaders meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDistrust of railroads in the nineteenth century, overregulation in the twentieth, and heavy government subsidies for airports and roads have left the country with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail system. Amtrak has endured for decades, and yet failed to prosper owing to a lack of political and financial support and an uneasy relationship with the big, remaining railroads.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile riding the rails, McCommons explores how the country may move passenger rail forward in America—and what role government should play in creating and funding mass-transportation systems. Against the backdrop of the nation's stimulus program, he explores what it will take to build high-speed trains and transportation networks, and when the promise of rail will be realized in America.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Chelsea Green Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47036163555568,"sku":"9781603580649","price":16.56,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781603580649_p0.jpg?v=1763824739","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781603580649","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}